What I Learned Reading PREDATOR (1987) Screenplay
If it bleeds, we can kill it.
I think they didn’t go with this tagline but they should’ve. One of my other best taglines from the original Alien (1979) “In space, no one can hear you scream.” and from the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974) “Who will survive and what will be left of them?” Just these sentences give you the chills before you start to watch them. And with Predator, it’s all about the action.
If I start with the changes, Predator was not the Predator before. The script is called Hunter. It doesn’t have a helmet, has orange blood instead of green, and we see it’s ship in the last battle. But in the movie it’s different.
No Shane Black jokes in the script. The character he plays doesn’t speak up until they hit the guerrilla base. And not just him, there’s not much humor in the screenplay. It’s more serious. But in the movie, humor makes them human for us. We can easily relate with them when they’re goofing around.
The story has a simple structure. We have a group of soldiers that we care, and they’re trying to survive against this extraterrestrial warrior.
We care for them because they’re the best at what they do and they’re under the threat of this ultimate warrior. We see through Hunter’s POV while it’s watching them. And we see them being the best through McTiernan’s clever directing. He makes the camera dance with them when they’re getting ready to hit the guerrilla base. We witness their perfect coordination and they goof around while working seamlessly.
The anticipation starts to build this way. It has one other trick up it’s sleeves as well. Our protagonist is Schwarzenegger, so we know he’s gonna kill it at the end. But the script keeps and presents the Predator invincible up until the end. And it leaves us thrilled.
The antagonist in this story, takes down most of our main characters easily and unexpectedly… Hawkins, Blain, Mac, Dillon, Billy, Ramirez… leaving only Dutch(Schwarzenegger) behind. Usually in the movies, if the antagonist takes down one or two of them, that’s enough to make the threat real. But no, not in this script, the ultimate warrior hunts them one by one. Up until Dutch realizes mud makes him invisible in Predator’s eyes. And it realizes this by chance. So, Predator is even stronger then our protagonist in every way. Again, the thrill…
When they have everything the Predator is invincible, has heat vision and it’s invisible. But after Dutch loses everyone and everything, at that moment Predator loses the heat vision — Dutch finds that mud makes him invisible in Predator’s eyes — and it loses the invisibility. Then, the odds start to change.
The last battle between the Predator and Dutch is completely different.
In the script, Dutch easily karate-chops it and the Predator escapes to its spacecraft. Dutch finds its other-worldly weapon and kills it, blowing the spacecraft up. The chopper sees the explosion and comes to pick up Dutch.
In the movie, Dutch basically hunts the hunter. He lures it into his trap and kills it. Then, it blows itself up and the chopper sees the explosion and comes to pick up Dutch. No spacecraft, alien weapon, and karate-chop involved.
About the dialogue, it’s one of the most quotable movies of all time. It has the very little amount of dialogue but yet they even cut that too.
It’s cheesy, it’s easy but I always think it’s one of the best action movies of all time. I never stopped and thought about it before but after reading the screenplay I learned why it’s so good. Schwarzenegger faces his ultimate enemy and we feel that he might not win this time. Lives the hell, loses all his friends, but he survives against all the odds, leaving us thrilled…
Stick around.
Predator (1987) Screenplay [PDF] by Jim Thomas and John Thomas — for educational purposes only.
